Before the hazardous nature of asbestos was fully appreciated, asbestos was widely used to insulate pipes in buildings. It is of course now realized that exposure to asbestos, and particularly to airborne asbestos fibers and dust, creates a significant health hazard. The awareness of the dangers inherent in the presence of asbestos has led to the removal of asbestos insulation, even when undamaged. As an example, quite often a potential purchaser of a building or house will require removal of all asbestos before consummating the purchase. Both federal and state laws require extraordinary protection for workers engaged in the removal of asbestos containing materials. To afford such protection without seriously hampering the work effort, several devices and systems have been used.
Today glove bags are widely used in safely removing asbestos insulation form pipes. One of the first such glove bags was that one known as the Asbebag which is described in United Kingdom Patent No. 1,567,270 and Canadian Patent No. 1,188,191. It was made of two sheets of transparent plastic material with side gussets and welded seams. The top of the bag had front and back flaps that were placed about a length of insulated pipe and held together with a sliding clasp fastener. These flaps extended laterally from the main body of the bag to provide extensions that were secured to sections of the pipe that straddle the section to be stripped. Mittens extended into the interior of the bag. Mating Velcro strips and covering plastic flaps were provided to seal off a bottom portion of the bag after the pipe has been cleaned and the stripped debris or lagging has been collected therein. A second generation Asbebag of Petro Zarkos shown in United Kingdom Patent Application No. 2,157,822A, was of similar shape, both being the shape such like that of a T-shirt formed with two sheets of plastic welded together at their edges.
Another, design glove bag of Natale is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,626,291. It is made of a length of polyethylene lay-flat tubing with a sealed bottom and open top flaps that are wrapped about a pipe.
More recently the asbestos abatement industry has adopted glove bags of a design that has a number of individual debris collection chambers or pouches that depend downwardly from an elongated upper section or manifold that is wrapped about a pipe. Such a bag is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,901,743 of Hittler and is referred to as an extended run safety glove bag. This type glove bag has the advantage of enabling a long section of pipe to be stripped of insulation with a single bag where, otherwise, several bags would have to be individually mounted or a single bag mounted and remounted a number of times along successive portions of the pipe section.
Though the foregoing glove bags have been commercially successful, their specially designed shapes have resulted in substantial waste of plastic material and other manufacturing inefficiencies. And though the Natale design is simple, being made from a length of lay flat tubing without lateral flaps or sleeves, it has been difficult to bunch and seal to pipe lagging. Its bottom seal has also been susceptible to breaching when loaded with stripped lagging and water used in the stripping process.
Another problem with these glove bags relates to the handling of long sections of insulation. After stripping, long sections of insulation are difficult to maneuver within the glove bags down into the debris collection bags. The length of stripped insulation relative to the size of the openings of the debris collection bags and the cramped working area surrounding the piping limit the length of insulation that is removable for placement directly in the debris collection bags. Therefore, stripped long sections must often be further cut into pieces before insertion into the debris collection bags, or shorter lengths must be cut initially. Either procedure requires additional time to an already time consuming, laborious task.
It thus is seen that a need remains for a safety glove bag for use in removing hazardous material from a pipe of simplified construction and manufacturing efficiency. Accordingly, it is to the provision of such that the present invention is primarily directed.